


not every girl survives the forest (sometimes she becomes it)

by ammacrelin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Healing, Language, Multi, Natasha Romanov/Reader - Freeform, Reader-Insert, Red Room (Marvel), Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23154790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ammacrelin/pseuds/ammacrelin
Summary: You were raised, trained, and indoctrinated into the world of assassins and spies at the Red Room Academy. At fourteen, you are chosen to be the next Black Widow, the youngest in its history, but on the night before your graduation ceremony you flee. You have since gone rogue, delivering your own retributive justice in the world and swearing to kill the organization that you saw kill so many before. You wish only that your hands were made for more than the calamity of ruining but wishing is a faithless practice. What does it mean to be human, if you never truly were?Follows the events of The Winter Soldier.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	1. Prologue: 2004

The carpet is soft beneath your padded soles and hushes movements already made quiet with years of practice. Somewhere outside, voices are diluted in your ears, both foreign and familiar. The sounds are distorted, warped by insulation and drywall, but still you make some semblance of words out of them. Something about a baby shower and the stress of invitations rings in your ear and then they’re laughing. They’re laughing and you’re poised under a wooden desk attaching a silencer to a pistol.

The steel is heavy in your palm and cold where metal kisses flesh. To your left is a worn grandfather clock ticking away the hours, minutes, seconds. You’ve counted four-thousand-nine-hundred-eighty pendulum swings. Every _tick, tick, tick,_ is deafening in the otherwise silent room, save for the occasional broken hum of air conditioning clinging to life. Your muscles ache with the effort of staying static for nearly three hours but you’re grateful for the placidity that has since followed. No more baby shower discussions, no more laughs, no more witnesses and collateral damage. Soon enough, you hear the door to the office open and close and the strained voice of a man now accompanies you in the dim lit room.

“No my love, I’m sorry, I have to work late tonight.” A pause. “I know, I wish I were there too.” Pause. “Yes of course. Kiss Eli and Hannah good night for me please. I love you. I’ll see you later tonight. Goodbye, love.”

Your mercy is in granting him an _I love you_ and a _goodbye_ one final time. When he deflates into the leather office chair with a worn sigh, tie loose around his neck and a yawn teasing at his lips, you rise and pull the trigger. One silent shot in the head and crimson is blemished into framed art deco and leaking into a satin collar. You reach for the mechanism at your waist: a small device black as night and resembling a rectangular prism. Your thumb clicks against one end and at your interference the other end glows a furious red. It smells of burnt flesh when you push it into his neck just behind the ear ─ the black outline of a small crescent moon charred into his skin.

Architecture is slick with condensation when you leave the gaudy and overheated building, shedding the last skin of a thundering storm. Your eyes seek refuge behind lethargic, violet lids, digits pushing into the skin until you’re seeing stars instead of faces. The saturated sound of a police siren cuts through the neighbourhood silence and you’re tugging the hood of your tactical suit closer against your body, almost laughing at the habitual routine ingrained into muscle memory. A fourteen year old girl roaming the streets alone at night was bound to attract unwanted attention and questions. Perhaps they’ve found his body now and soon enough Eli, Hannah, and what’s-her-face are being greeted at their door with the news. Any lingering remnants of a would-be laugh are gone from your lips at that.

You continue down the street and pull into the asylum of a back alley and shadows and rest against polluted brick. Eli’s tears and Hannah’s cries and what’s-her-face’s futile attempts to calm her children ring in your brain. The crown of your head is sore with the motions of hitting it against the hard facade and soon enough you feel warmth trickling down the back of your neck and the threat of blackness eclipses your vision. Ivories catch the inside of your cheek in their vice to halt the scream blooming in your lungs. A sigh is falling from your lips when you push off the ruined wall and continue through the labyrinth of empty streets and damp alleyways.

When you make it back to the safe house ─ a dilapidated infrastructure you figure was used for exploited factory work once upon a time ─ your handler is waiting for you. She is tall and slim, carrying the grace of a trained dancer and the lethality of any other woman you’ve met at the Red Room. Where your mark is the crescent moon, hers is an unfilled circle with a divot at the crown in the shape of a “v”. You think you remember seeing it on your cadaverous mother’s index finger years ago in your developing youth but the memory is hazy at best, as if enveloped in tar and stained with the same midnight hue.

“Is it done?” She speaks in Russian, her tone cold and harsh as it bites at exposed flesh in the close proximity. You again pull at the hood of your suit.

“Yes. One bullet to the head. Time of death at 20:47. No other casualties.”

“Good. Now come.” If she noticed the matted hair and dried blood at the back of your scalp, she doesn’t bother to acknowledge it.

You follow the click of heels against concrete to a static vehicle in the dark. The moon bleeds into ash tinted clouds still pregnant with the promise of rain. Where the light of the sky permeates cloud and broken wood beams, unkempt lattices are painted on the floor and you watch as a spider shuffles in and out of the dark. “I have great hopes for you.” She’s idle at the car door and you walk across to the passenger side reflecting her inertia. “You will be chosen as the next Black Widow at tomorrow’s graduation ceremony. I tell you this now to prepare you for what comes next.”

When she moves to enter the vehicle you follow, sliding into leather as dark as the carbon fibre of its make and you’re off, driving through placid streets you recognize as London. “Never in my life have I seen such skill from any candidate. You, my little bird... you are special.” A spider runs along the dashboard ─ the same spider you suspect to have been skittering in the shadows ─ before being crushed under the weight of her closed fist. “Special, and deadly, and beautiful. You have proven yourself well.” You will be the next Black Widow. You, who trained for this since you were four years old and still suckling at your thumb. You, who killed plenty of your own sisters in the red room on blood-sticky training floors and strangers alike. You, who at fourteen, pull the still loaded gun from your waist and shoot the woman to your right.

She feels the bullet before she recognizes your movement and her body is spent, weighed down to the steering wheel as the car veers off the road into the skeleton of a building all steel beams and unfinished concrete. When metal wraps around a pillar you allow your body to go limp, dancing in the air as the vehicle tumbles and rolls. You note the breaking of marrow, the sever of skin, the rise of unsettled dust and dirt as the car pacifies back on ruptured tires.

Taking inventory, you count a broken wrist (set immediately, eyes unflinching at the rearranging of marrow beneath your skin) and a few cuts across varying ligaments and appendages. Your head bleeds the most, you suspect from the reopened gash at the back of your cranium. In hindsight, not the most healthy paroxysm of emotions. The woman to your right is dead. Time of death at approximately 21:02. No other visible casualties that you’re aware of.

Removing yourself from the tangle of broken glass proves to be a challenge, but nothing you haven’t accomplished before. You remember the first vehicle roll: an unknowing test granted to you in the Red Room. There were twelve of you, all with sacks over your eyes and chained and handcuffed in your seats, being transported to some other location as the bus plunged into an arctic lake. You were the only one to make it out and you watched from the snowy boulder as the residue of oxygen bubbled to the top of the lake with none of your sisters to follow. You were seven.

A stream of dust rises in greeting. You rise with it, knuckles split from where they hold your weight over glass shards. The moonlight caresses your skin as you stand, all blemished in dirt and blood and broken glass. Somewhere beneath spare lumber a rodent watches your movement, both curious and frightened. It scurries away into London streets soon enough, bored of watching your ragged breathing and shaking digits.

You will not be the next Black Widow. You, who spent years of your childhood manufactured into the assassin, spy, and monster they deemed you to be. You, who slept with the ghosts of your sisters and strangers alike clawing at your unconsciousness begging for the return of their lives that you took. You, who at fourteen killed the handler who brought this livelihood upon you and now lies halfway through a shattered windshield with a crescent moon burned into the index finger of her right hand.

It occurs to you that you will be hunted, maimed, and tortured, though you can’t seem to care much. It’s cathartic, really ─ to watch the blood pool across dented steel and fall onto the treadmarks in the gravel. A flame inhales its first wicked breath and the perfume of scorched rubber and gasoline reaches your senses. You stand there waiting for the first sound of a siren, daring the fire to touch you.

When police arrive, you are long gone. They find your mark on the unnamed woman anchored to the jagged glass of the windshield, still fresh and red and angry. They see the same mark again through the years on the bodies of others: mafia, human traffickers, kingpins ─ all the same to you. They name you Nox for your signature left on the countless victims. In the media, you are a vigilante. In the intelligence community, an enigma. In the crime world, a wreckoning.

Whatever they made of you, you didn’t care. What mattered is that you were not the Black Widow. Not anymore. You chose otherwise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My very first fic so let me know what you think! Any comments, suggestions, and critiques are very much welcomed.


	2. Chapter 2

The next nine years were pleasant in the same sense that a splinter is pleasant as its stuck below the nail bed. Through black eyes and bruised skin and splintered lips, vindication is what drove you; it’s what coaxed you out of the makeshift bed you made in the early hours of morning ─ a geriatric Persian rug slung across cement cracking where rain had fallen and ice expanded. When the sun accosted the side of your cheek, your lids fluttered open in exchange. It was warm, warming your skin and attempting to puncture veins riddled with steel and vengeance. It paints you in a benevolence undeserving. You rise and ready for the day and the shadows of the temporary safehouse greet you as they always do.

Digits prod at pooled condensation around a glass long forgotten, ice cubes diluting something too saccharine but ordered as a response to niceties offered by a server. She is young, balancing a first job between school and band practice ─ a pianist with fingers made to play Tchaikovsky. She hums an old concerto as she approaches and recommends the drink with singing praises and how could you say no when her smile is so genuine? The thing is, she’s kind and loving and gentle and everything you wish you could be. Sunlight kisses you and you shift in your seat, jacket pulled taut against your body.

Maybe you would have noticed it if you weren’t grieving for a buried girlhood of first jobs and band practice and reverence for drinks too sweet to be palatable. Maybe you would have seen the glimmer of something metal on a rooftop across the street or the taxi that had circled the block four times without stopping for any passengers. Or maybe you were just tired. Of the running, the pretending, all of it. 

The sun falls below the horizon in a honey-thick decline as if still longing to stay, parting with one final lethargic goodbye. When you enter the warehouse long past its prime and ruin that you have called home for the weeks past, a shiver is at your spine. Your hand is at the holster and grabbing the loaded gun before a second passes. Somebody is here. Or was here. You’ve figured that out. You suspect it’s _them._ Years of running and now they are here. The Red Room is back for you.

You descend into the building, deeper, darker. Upon inspection, everything is as it seems. The clothes you keep are still folded neatly, your cup of water from this morning still rests half empty on the floor, and the bag full of money, passports, and other bare essentials is untouched where it lays hidden within the walls.

It’s then that you see it: a polaroid just barely peeking through yesterday’s folded newspaper. Between sports columns and headlines is a picture of the young server from the cafe. She is curled between an afgan throw with a white cat at her side, both unsuspecting of the intrusion from the window, and reading from a high school math textbook. Bile rises in your throat and you reach for the glass of water on the floor with shaking fingers.

Your thoughts are loud and speak of unkind things. _How could you! This isn’t acceptable! You should have known better! Stupid! Stupid, silly girl, thinking she could get a taste at domesticity! Your mess is going to cost a poor girl her life!_

You can’t swallow it and run outside, knees buckling into hard gravel, and heave until there’s nothing left. When your lungs are steady and your lids finally open, you see ink etched into the back of the photograph: an address here in Paris with a date and time, two days from now. Fine. If they wanted you, so be it. You refused to let your ignorance cost a girl her life.

Waiting is hell. You hardly sleep, hardly eat, you can’t function knowing that the life of another is running from death at your own hubris. Drywall and plaster litter the floor where you punched and cursed until your knuckles bled.

You wonder where the girl is right now. Maybe she’s with friends and gossiping about boys. Cillian, you believe his name is. She mentioned a date with him was upcoming and she couldn’t decide what to wear: the flowery wrap dress or the white and blue ensemble. You remember she decided on the wrap dress, after telling her you loved flowers. She asked you your favourite and you lied. _“Dahlias are beautiful, aren’t they? If I had to pick, then they’d be it.”_ You weren’t sure where the lies ended and you began.

When the time comes to meet your suitor, you are prepared. Two guns concealed on your person (ammunition in various pockets ─ you weren’t going to make the mistake of running out of ammo. you were better than that), a dagger strapped to your calf. You would have to forgo everything else, lest you make yourself stand out among the crowd of gathering people. And therein lay the problem: the crowd.

The meeting place specified a street corner at 12pm. The issue wasn’t the place, rather the event that surrounded it. Scheduled to last all afternoon, a parade would be wandering about the city and that meant plenty of innocent lives unknowing to the danger that creeped and slithered within the streets. Anxiety makes a home in the pit of your stomach at the thought.

Music is loud and laughter surrounds you. A child with glittery butterfly face paint runs past you, bumping into your thigh and giggling out a sweet “Sorry miss!” between a mouthful of cotton candy. She runs backwards to face you, waving too enthusiastically with sticky fingers, before bumping into another person in the crowd, her mother you assume, with the way she caresses the child’s crown with a tenderness that you feel unworthy of watching. You turn, backing into an alley to get to your destination away from others.

The street corner is bare, nothing to indicate that your surrender and capture is nigh. Instead, you focus on surveillance. To your right is a wide street perfect to usher a brimming crowd. You think you remember a school down the road too: perfect for offering sanctuary should the event arise. Plenty of tall buildings around. If they wanted to kill you from a distance, a sniper could be positioned anywhere and a scared mass of bodies would be the perfect cover to escape.

As you wait, a blonde man approaches with a red haired woman at his side. They walk in tandem, two pieces of a puzzle meant to slot perfectly together. Husband and wife? No, their demeanor is off, despite how much they may act the part. She clings to his side sporting a smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.

“You need to come with us.” The man’s tone is stern: a demand, no room for questioning.

“Who are you?”

“Huh. Didn’t think this would be so easy.” The woman speaks up, a familiar purr to her voice. You see she is hiding something in her jacket. “He’s the person tasked with bringing you in. Now could we just skip all this? I’d rather not make a scene.”

You nod and feign a smile before the woman embraces you. It’s innocent, chaste to any passerby. Friends greeting each other in the street, perhaps meeting for the parade. But when she presses her body to yours, you know it’s to emphasize the feel of her gun pushing against your lungs ( _try and run,_ it says, _just see what will happen_ ) and a needle, hidden by the sleeve of her jacket, punctures the skin at your neck.

The world spins and is coloured something funny. You can’t focus on anything else besides the faux laugh of the woman as she releases you. “Just how much did you drink, Emma?” That’s not your name. You don’t think so anyways. Or is it? You can’t remember. “C’mon, it’s barely 12 and you already hit up the bar, didn’t you? You were supposed to wait for us!”

The man is at your side and supporting your weight and you register that you’re all walking now. You, stumbling here and there, but capable for the most part. Something isn’t right. If the Red Room wanted you then why would they send these two? Sure, they seem trained enough but only the woman is armed and the man doesn’t look to be from the Red Room at all. Where their agents are hardened, something sinister behind the eye, this man looks … _good._ Like a halo would fit nicely atop blonde locks.

There is something familiar in the way crimson frames her ivory visage. Something in the way she speaks and poises herself. Haunting, something from your past, this ghost of a woman stands at your side weaving through the crowd.

Your jaw clenches and you force coherent thoughts to the surface, fighting comatose. Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong and there are civilians all around you and you are being coaxed towards sleep. At the stutter in your step, the man tightens his bruising grip at your arm. “Huh? What was that?” He speaks, acknowledging your thoughts you didn’t realize were mumbled out loud.

“Something… wrong. People,” you attempt to point towards the wide street you saw earlier and realize you have no idea in which direction that is. “Where is...” an inhale through clenched teeth, “the wide street? People…”

The two share a look and shove your back into the brick of the nearest building. The man holds you to the wall while the woman speaks. “Listen, whatever you’re trying to pull─”

She doesn’t finish her sentence before the bomb goes off. Your body is thrown somewhere and you feel the breath expelled from your lungs. The last thing you see is the crying face of a young child with a disheveled butterfly smeared across her face, glitter mixing with dirt and blood, before you’re being pulled and something hits your head from behind. Sleep envelopes you and the sirens and shouts are quelled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course, thoughts and critiques are always welcomed. 🤍


	3. Chapter 3

When you awake, there are voices. “Did it work? Are Rogers and Romanoff dead?”

“We didn’t find them at the scene. We Just grabbed Nox and left.”

“Damn it, Rumlow! What was the point in getting them there if the blast didn’t kill them!”

Your body feels heavy with the weight of the world. Something is pressed at your back, holding you up in your unconscious state, wrists bound together by something metal and neck between a glove-clad fist. Rogers, Romanoff, Rumlow. You try to put faces to the names but fall short, though something sings of familiarity in the back of your head. The mass at your back pulls your wrists tighter upon sensing your stirring.

“I- I’m sorry sir but we thought it would.”

“Don’t be sorry, just get the girl in here.”

Any attempts to move are halted by the figure holding you still in their impossibly strong grip. You can’t crane your neck to inspect your surroundings but from what’s in your line of sight, you gather that you’re in the vault of a bank. Newly disturbed dust dances at the air with every movement and you figure its location is new to them as well. You’re pushed forwards into scrutiny under an older man in an expensive suit.

“There she is! You know, I’ve been looking for you for a while.” The man, seemingly in charge, clasps his hands together to accompany a cheshire grin. “I have to say, I’m a fan. Nox? Is that what they named you? Latin for the night…” His laugh plagues your ears. “I do love the theatrics of it all. Your signature really is remarkable.”

You’re silent, chest rising and falling evenly. You were trained for this. You won’t break, refuse to.

“Release the girl. If she tries anything, you know what to do.” At his words, the presence behind you disappears and you’re left to stumble forward, yet to regain your balance and acutely aware of the lost warmth. You suspect a concussion, though whether that’s from the explosion or the hit that knocked you out, you can’t be sure. Maybe a combination of the two. “Come here, Nox.”

Through rattling ribs, you steady yourself, eyes closed and sinew taut. The man repeats his command and you open your lids to see a new figure by his side. Long hair, deadly eyes that promise the ruining of empires, you figure his home is somewhere in inferno, maybe a forgotten nightmare. Beautiful enough to tempt you further into hell with his empty blue eyes. He plays the part of a guard dog well: obedient, lethal, with a muzzle to match. The glint of metal under the light tells you what you already know. He’s the Winter Soldier. So it’s true then. The ghost story is real and he is a man. But in your experience, all men can be killed.

You step forward towards the one in charge and vaguely recognize his face. “My name is Alexander Pierce.” He studies your countenance, stoicism perfected, his brows squinting. “But you knew that already.” You nod, once, a simple acknowledgement. “Do you know why you’re here?”

It occurs to you then that you really don’t. This man wasn’t the Red Room. You know every blood stained name in that place that mattered and he wasn’t among them and thus, not on your kill list. His affiliation is to the World Security Council and by default, SHIELD. So what was it he wanted with you?

“You know, I have an Aston Martin DB4. It’s a beautiful thing, really. Only a few of them left. Drives like a dream ─ I’ll let you see it someday.” Pierce’s legs cross, back resting against the only chair in the vault, and he is a picture of apathy. A king in his throne and you, at his mercy. “Also got myself a Volvo P1800. See, I consider myself a bit of a collector. When you’re like me, life can get a little… tiresome. The same routine, it’s just─ it gets boring. Some people like their private islands, their yachts, hell! Some even got their own gold bathrooms! Can you believe that? A gold plated toilet! Huh... That’s just something else.” A pause, as if lost in reveries of bathrooms coated in gold to shout of undeserved wealth. “But me, I like my cars, among other things.”

Something wicked is swimming beneath the cold blue of his irises that you have seen in the eyes of many before: a willingness to burn kingdoms to the ground and revel in citadels still in smoke. You are calculating, weighing scales in your head. Whatever this man wanted with you, it was secondary to what you wanted from him. You had no use for his self righteous monologue; you had an empire of your own to topple. Perhaps he had information on the Red Room you could use. With a knife, you were very persuasive. “What do you want with me?” Your tenor is unwavering, impassive in the close vicinity.

At your words, he is grinning again. “To add you to my collection, of course.” There are now six guns trained on you. Nothing you can’t handle. Your own weapons have been taken off your person (as expected; despite your knowledge on who this group was, or rather lack thereof, you didn’t take them as idiots) but you’re made for ruin, for wreckage. “Who else can say they’ve collected the Winter Soldier and Nox herself? Or would you rather I call you Y/N?”

It’s something you haven’t heard in years and you can’t help the way your facade breaks for the single second it does but it’s enough. He reads the trepidation and knows he’s won. You don’t know how, but he knows who you are. He knows of Nox: the anonymous, media-made hero combing the world for its monsters and leaving only a crescent moon burn behind. He knows of Y/N: the renounced would-be Black Widow disappearing before graduation and on the hunt, claws dripping with Red Room blood. He knows everything. He means to make his way out of the vault cage and his dog, ever loyal, follows. As he passes you he waves a lazy palm in the air. “Secure her.”

Four nameless guards are upon you and you act the part of docile girl. When one reaches to cuff your hands to your back, you strike. You’re quick, efficient. You reach behind you and with a whip of your wrists, the cuffs are off before they lock, body spinning to grab the gun from his waist and shooting two in the chest before they fire back at you and you’re using the first one to shield yourself from the bullets. Three out of six down. You shoot from behind the deadweight body littered with bullets from his comrades and another one is dead. Tossing the gun aside you roll to the floor, grabbing a knife from a bleeding body and toss it into the hand of a guard reaching for her gun, palm stapled to her hip, and you kick her legs out from under her. She screams a litany of curses and you erect the knife from her body only to bury it again in her chest. The last guard strikes with a choleric vigor, all untamed rage, and you use his frenzy to your advantage. When he charges for you, you use his momentum to grab at his left arm and swing yourself to his backside, hearing a sickening crunch from his appendage. You mean to make work of the last guard and you very well could have if not for the sudden metallic grip on your throat shoving you to the ground.

That antagonizing, irritable laugh again. “My, my!” Blackness teases your vision and you writhe under the body atop your own. “Now, Y/N, where are your manners?” The way he struts to your paralyzed figure drips with an arrogance brewed only from birth with silver spoons and golden ichor. He leans down to your face, placidity interrupted with a squared jaw and narrowing of lids ─ _daring._ A stubborn refusal to be tamed. “Impressive, I must say. Five guards in what? Seven seconds? And you nearly made it to six.” He gestures for the last guard left alive cradling his broken arm. “Rumlow, isn’t that something?”

There is a tightness in his voice that you know is swallowing threats made in your name. “Yes sir. It was something.” His gaze on you, Rumlow, is cold and promising.

“Just look what she did to you, boy. Get out of here. Go fix yourself up.”

“Yes sir.”

You’re left staring at Pierce’s fascinated visage with an audience of five dead silhouettes on the ground, the smell of iron heavy in the air as it permeates your senses. Digits caress the side of your face where tendrils have fallen and your efforts at turning from his touch are impeded by the tightening hold on your throat. “Oh, my little bird…” Something resembling pity coats his tongue. “I believe it’s time to snip off these wings of yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and reads! As a first time writer it's very reassuring and exciting to see! Would also like to wish everyone safety and love in this scary time. Please keep yourself busy, wash your hands, and remember to have hope and spread kindness. 🤍🤍


End file.
